I recently had my laptop's harddrive replaced, but I would like to take some data off of the old (functional) one? What kind of equipment do I need to do this?

The old harddrive is a 500 GB, 7000 RPM, 2.5 inch mobile harddrive. I remember that a friend helped me do this once and he had some sort of cord or attachment that he used to connect the harddrive to my computer.

12 Answers

Does your laptop have slots for two hard drives? If so you could just put the old HD in the slave spot, transfer the files over and then take it back off. If not your going to need a get either a IDE to usb cable or whats in that link you put up there.

@jaytkay a lot of large desktop replacement laptops (17”/18”) aimed at gamers have 2 sata bays so they can offer RAID. You can also get 2 graphics cards in as well although you end up with something so heavy you probably wouldn’t want to carry too far.

I would go for @dabbler‘s suggestion (the USB-to-hard-drive adapter) if you don’t plan to use the hard drive again.

Plus it’s a great thing to have in your toolkit for future hard drive upgrades.

And if you get it, here is a tip: Keep the adapter and its cables and power supply together in a ziploc bag so they don’t get separated. They look like random electronic bits and it’s really easy to lose something and make it all useless (voice of experience).